In a landscape as etched, a few silhouettes move like ghosts. The detonations that rang before our arrival on the front line of Avdiivka fell silent. From the top of a ruined building housing former military positions, we see behind us the large extinct chimneys of a fuel factory; and in front of us, immense fields bordered by trees at the end of which the structures of a city take shape on the side of the people's republic of Donetsk.
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Avdiivka was one of the first cities to fall into the hands of the separatists at the start of the conflict in 2014. Resumption by the Ukrainians at the cost of a long and exhausting battle, the workers' city participated in crystallizing the famous front line which , more than five years later, has never really changed. There remains today a deafening silence, weighing down an atmosphere already frozen by the winter cold. Further on, sprawled on ammunition boxes, cats purr under
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